Rethinking cybercrime prevention: Building on inoculation rationales through introducing “reflective fortification”

• In Event: Digital Victimization and other issues

Abstract

This presentation will focus on a paper that offers a novel approach to doing cybercrime awareness education, based on the efforts of the University of Portsmouth Cybercrime Awareness Clinic in providing services for awareness of and resilience to cybercrime to multiple vulnerable groups and organisations. It highlights the lessons learned in relation to creating more efficient strategies for cybercrime awareness that provide a more holistic view of existing strategies, whilst trying to remedy any weaknesses identified. In order to achieve the above, the analysis explores how cybercrime is primarily reliant on some form of individual manipulation, which in turn is based on a variety of persuasion techniques that lead to particular reactions. Subsequently, and on that basis, the paper discusses how relevant theories, such as the Persuasion Knowledge Model and Inoculation Theory have been explored in relation to tackling particular online problems such as mis/dis-information and phishing and making users more resilient to such attacks. Finally, the paper articulates the Cybercrime Awareness Clinic’s theory regarding the addition of a distinct layer of awareness and resilience-building to inoculation-based trainings. This new layer in cyberawareness trainings, which the authors have termed “Reflective Fortification”, relies on self-reflection models and involves training on self-reflection techniques regarding users’ personal vulnerabilities towards particular persuasion attacks prevalent in different cybercrimes. Additionally, “reflective fortification” involves the boosting of associated skills, such as critical thinking, emotional awareness and digital citizenship. The paper argues that trainings that are premised on the above rationales can further facilitate the process of self-reflection as a form of personal vulnerability scanning that in turn can have the potential to reinforce the effects of inoculation techniques in achieving higher/longer-lasting resilience levels against persuasion attacks and considers how the implementation of such rationales could affect cybersecurity education policies.

Keywords: cybercrime, cybersecurity, inoculation, self-reflection, crime prevention

Authors

• Anne Louise Kirby, University of Portsmouth

• Vasileios Karagiannopoulos, University of Portsmouth

• Simon Marsden, University of Portsmouth